Death. . . And Rebirth
by sable freelancer
Summary: A little history on the Ancients, and why they do not have to give their life essence as do humans.
1. Prologue

Before Jenova came to the Planet, as most now know, the Ancients lived in relative harmony with the planet. Their cities- as hard as it is now to believe that they existed- still stood, elegantly sculpted from the Planet's materials: wood, stone, plant. The Ancients had a theory that there were three parts to everything, and they based their philosophy on this.  
  
Three Ages- the Age of the Calamity From the Sky, the Age of the Calm, and the Age of Death. As you can probably guess, the age of the Calamity From the Sky was when Jenova fell to the planet, killing or mutating all but a select handful of the Ancients. They had to learn to rebuild their cities, rebuild their culture around this foreign entity. That was the Age of Birth, the Birth of new cities and new cultures. The Age of the Calm lasted nearly 2000 years and was the second longest age. During this time mankind was born from the Planet; how was not questioned by the Ancients, for they knew that the Planet's decisions were for the best. Some believed that the humans were born to revenge the Planet for Jenova and the mortal wound She had caused- the Northern Crater. But, as the humans eventually learned to build reactors with Mako, that belief died as quickly as the plants and animals who once lived near the reactors. Somewhere between the Age of the Calm and the Age of Death humans learned technology, and how to use it to their advantage. The Age of the Calm was the Age of Life, the Planet in its prime, with all races living in harmony.  
  
The Age of Death is the one most of you are probably acquainted with, as that was the last age and the current one also. The Shinra corporation drained energy from the Planet to fuel the vast city of Midgar, one of the reasons the Planet was so wrath with the entire city during the time of Meteor. A human scientist named Hojo (no one knew him by any other name, any flattering one anyway) had worked out how to use Jenova cells to "upgrade" humans. But not perfectly. There were side effects, on pregnant women especially. A son born to a woman who had been infused with Jenova cells. Sephiroth, the would-be saviour of the planet.  
  
"What?" you ask. "The saviour? How, when he summoned Meteor to destroy the very world we live on?" Remember that the Planets' choices are not always those which would benefit mankind. By summoning Meteor and destroying the Planet he would have effectively eliminated Jenova from the Planet forever. Although it would have taken the Planet with it, better that than having the virus of Jenova forevermore instead. Ironic, because according to some sources who knew the man well he thought of Jenova as a mother, unaware that his mother had been a mere mortal. Until she had been infused with Jenova cells, making her something else.  
  
And yet one woman stood in the way of his plans. An Ancient. Those who were fated to protect the planet. Her first line of defense failed. Summoning Holy only resulted in the Planet drawing on the immense power needed to summon it to aid Meteor to the Planet. Next the woman called on the Lifestream to aid her. Because the Lifestream essentially made up a great part of the consciousness of the Planet, having it drained left the Planet defenseless as the Lifestream was guided to destroy Holy. Mankind's selfishness would forever be its downfall. The spirits in the Lifestream apparently didn't want the Planet destroyed any more than those still living did, and because of that Jenova still lives, looking for Her next carrier. And so the Age of Death still continues, the dying song of the Planet. How many more years? Estimates have been made for 100 at most, if the Planet hasn't lost its will to live from the sheer weight of supporting everyone on it, including Jenova and her carriers.  
  
Yes, the woman had to die for that, and for that we grieve, for an unnecessary death. But if you had been there when Sephiroth's sword first pierced the flesh of that girl, you would have noticed something odd. Why did she not bleed, as others would have? Was it because she was an Ancient?  
  
Though this document may seem as though it's outlining a grim future for the Planet (and it is too), this is the story of the Ancients, and what they first gave to the Planet for that dubious gift. 


	2. Her Appearance

waaa! people liked my fic! aaaa . . .so happy. Anyway, thank you to the people who reviewed for your kind words. I'm sorry I don't update very often. I'll try to update as much as I can. Or as the inspiration strikes, either way.  
  
Oh, by the way, this first chapter is told sort of from a third-person perspective, but focusing on Jenova's perspective . . .does that make sense? Just so you don't get confused. Also, it probably doesn't make much sense right now. It will make a lot more sense when the rest of the chapters are written, so hang on. Really, I don't think this chapter is very good standing alone. But anyway- Read on, the story begins.  
  
"Exile. Exile for treason against the Council." The woman gasped and hung her head in shame as a stern-faced judge read out her sentence. The others in the hard wooden stands lining the walls muttered amongst themselves. She dared not look up- she could not stand their looking at her. She had always been self-conscious, more so than others. It felt as though she was alone in a small circle of light with the others in the darkness, unseen but devouring her with their eyes. Only her, illuminated, and the harsh angles and lighting of the courtroom faded away.  
  
What had her crime been, again? Some small, unimportant bombing. Hardly anything. No one had even been killed. They were trying to kill her Planet! Should she have just let that go by? Now, though, she reconsidered. Should she have, or should she have not interfered in a process which undoubtedly would have happened eventually anyway? By joining them had she just helped stave off the Planet's dying temporarily? A group of regulars at the bar where she sometimes went to drink had heatedly been discussing how the Council was trying to mine some kind of chemical from the Planet which the Planet needed to survive. Or something like that. Really, it had sounded like idiocy to her. The Planet was alive? Oh, and here she had been all this time just thoughtlessly existing on it.  
  
She had listened at first only because they seemed to be the only beings on the entire Planet who didn't think about mating all day and night. After that, though, as she had started to really listen, their topics and started to make more sense. They had talked about how the Fields of Elen. The woman who now stood alone in the courtroom remembered those. The snow-covered ones, up to the north. According to a couple of them because the important chemical had been drained from there the climate surrounding the area had become colder and colder until no life could grow on the surface. She had lived there. In a small village a few miles south of the Fields. Snow was beautiful, but lacked sustenance. Like so many of the people she knew. Her species had one single drive: to procreate. Well, most of them. Not her, of course. She was not some desire-driven idiot. Their species could be oddly hypnotizing, but they would kill you if you stayed with them too long. They had the ability to adapt to different planets to make themselves more appealing to the life-forms there. They simply hated people who tried to cling to them, claiming "love," which all her species knew was just a concept designed to mask the primal urge to procreate, before their species died out. Unlike other civilizations, technology was quite advanced on their planet and they could travel throughout their galaxy in small spacecrafts. Representatives of their Planet had been sent throughout the galaxy to other planets which had been selected as suitable breeding grounds, and their species was always received well.  
  
"Do you have any last words before we take you away to a temporary spot, until transportation can be arranged?" the judge asked. He leaned over his stand. Now that something out of the darkness was seen, it did not make it more reassuring, but instead scared the woman in the single spotlight. She wanted to be alone! Why had she ever agreed to their job in the first place? Not the solitude of exile, or being singled out, but the simple solitude of a single person in a vast snow field as snow silently fell.  
  
Because she had thought they would show her the way in their dying Planet. Maybe they would mark her with heaven's light as a savior. If she joined them, she would be recognized for who she was. Not just some empty snow field.  
  
A guard hauled the woman out of a side door, handcuffing her. She faintly heard the judge announce the next case as the door shut.  
  
Her jail cell was small, and made of metal. Thick metal bars prevented a break-out, as did the stone floor. But mainly what she saw was metal. So cold and mechanical. Just sheets of metal, really, hard and slightly silverish, was what her cell was made of. Made by machines, assembled by machines. Dimly she saw her reflection in one of the side walls, lit slightly by the lights in the hallway.  
  
The "arrangements for transportation" were apparently made rather quickly, as she was let out a few hours later to be escorted to an airship. The guards did not bother to wake her for the subsequent transportation to the space shuttle, but she did wake as she was going through space. Alone again, of course. There was a distinct difference between the barren snowfields she had seen and the memory of standing knee-deep in snow, lost in contemplation as grey skies poured down their silent ballet. One was a barren sort of emptiness, the other one was serene loneliness. Little pinpricks of whitish light were seen through the window, but she didn't much care about those. She was just another piece of space debris in a large field. But she didn't want to be just another snowflake. . .  
  
Over and over again she tried to pinpoint where she had gone wrong. Her mistake must have been leaving with those people. It had been very dark, and hard to see where she was going. She had tripped over a pipe and the bottom half of her body had been caught. The bomb had blown up as her companions left, running as fast as they could. No one had been hurt, but several injured. It was not her mistake, then, but theirs. Why had she left with them anyway? They must have tricked her.  
  
All she managed to sense after that was a faint sound of glass breaking. The ship had landed. She hoped somewhere in the back of her mind that this planet had air that was breathable. She could do without air fine, but it was usually necessary for other life forms, which she wanted. Funny. She never thought she would have wanted company.  
  
A small human with brown-was that what it was called? yes, brown- hair came running to the place where she had landed. A very small human. She was only about a quarter of the size of the woman who had just landed. Excitedly the brown-haired woman began babbling to some others, apparently previously hidden, who began to emerge from bushes and trees. The woman's instincts told her that a couple of those boys, though they were small, looked as though they would make suitable breeding stock. She shook the thought off for now. She was too good to think about such things at a time like this.  
  
"J3N-0V4," the brown-haired woman read off of the side of the spacecraft. "Jenova?" The others nodded to her. 'Jenova,' in the spacecraft, was bemused. It was the name of her planet. System J3N, the fourth planet from the sun there. But it was an ironic name for her, the exile of the planet for which she had been dubbed.  
  
"We . . . are . . .Cetra," the woman pronounced slowly. Jenova took this as an insult. Did they think she was stupid? Finally she pushed open the hatch of the ship, which was. . . on the ceiling. Odd. The spacecraft shouldn't have landed like that. Once outside, she had an instant vision of scale. She had made a crater on impact. The little ones crowded around below the craft where she was coming out. She could see that the land was gently rolling, with tall grass and an occasional tree. A starkly blue sky stood out against the grass. This was a new sensation for Jenova. She had lived underground on her planet, the air above being too hard for their systems to process.  
  
"Can you understand me?" Jenova asked somewhat derisively.  
  
"We welcome you to . . .Planet." The brown-haired one nodded. Apparently they couldn't understand Jenova, they had just answered her differently from the question she had asked.  
  
"Will you come with us?" one asked. One of the others who had been hiding. "Come to . . .Promised Land." Was that what they called the place where they lived? Jenova wondered. These humans seemed decidedly lacking in intelligence. Either that or they just couldn't talk. The humans looked at each other for a moment.  
  
"This is the third sign . . . could this be Her?" the brown-haired woman asked a couple of the others. Upon staring at each other longer (Jenova was completely unsure what to think of that; had they developed a system of communication around looks and glances?) they abruptly broke off their gazes and turned to Jenova as one.  
  
"Yes. We take you to Promised Land. Come. We have seen two signs from the sky. You are the third; you must be Her." The small party of humans began to walk away. Jenova followed, bemused. Did they think she was a goddess? Couldn't hurt if they did, anyway. Perhaps it would not be so bad being on this planet with stupid inhabitants, then.  
  
As she slowly slithered after them- she had not bothered to change her form to adapt to this planet yet- the lush grass left in her wake withered, gradually sickening the plants around them. 


End file.
